


Flashes in the Pan

by FlightyWren



Series: Kost of Peace [1]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Fantastic Racism
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-14
Updated: 2020-05-31
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:13:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24187948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FlightyWren/pseuds/FlightyWren
Summary: Snippets of Kost Adaar's life, leading up to, during, and after her time as Inquisitor.
Series: Kost of Peace [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1745713
Kudos: 1





	1. Family History

**Author's Note:**

> This is set in the same universe as my warden, Sulwen Tabris, and Rhona Hawke.

Raban Adaar was a fourth generation Vashoth, on his father’s side. His father’s family, the Adaars, had fled the Qun during the unrest that had descended after the Qunari signed their treaty with Thedas, nearly two hundred years ago. His grandfather’s father had wandered hopelessly through first Tevinter, then Orlais, and, finally had settled in the southwestern part of the Anderfels. Raban’s father, Rethari, still farmed the land (what little farming could be done in the desert) to this day.

His mother’s mother’s mother had left the Qun after the Fog Warriors had destroyed the home where she and two other tamassrans were raising their children. Her family settled in the Free Marches a hundred years ago, then Ferelden. Raban’s mother, Meler, had followed his father back to the Anderfels when he’d gone home after a trading trip to the small Anders town of Kunostadt.

Kunostadt was mostly humans (with most of the Adaar clan having left the area over the years to settle elsewhere), but there were a few Vashoth families that Raban could confidently count as blood that also lived on the outskirts of the village’s borders. The village welcomed them for trading and heavily (pointedly, Raban often thought) encouraged their attendance at Chantry meetings. While Raban didn’t care much for the teachings of the Chantry sisters—especially after seeing a childhood friend being dragged off screaming by the Templars—his parents were devout Andrastians. They took him to the Chantry at least once a week for prayers and blessings from the sisters there. Raban went quietly, if only for the quiet he could find there if not the devotion to the institute that ran the building.

So, Raban farmed the harsh land, hunted with his father, and prayed and had an overall peaceful life until the day twenty freshly escaped Tal-Vashoth showed up on his family’s doorstep.

In the following years, the Qunari called it the Saarebas Saariqah, the Mage Theft. The Great Betrayal. Five tamassran turned against the Qun and stole away from Seheron in the dead of night, but they were far from emptyhanded. Behind them, they left six dead arvaarad. With them, they took the control rods of just over twenty saarebas. And then they disappeared into the wilds of Thedas.

Six months after this upset, a group of bedraggled Tal-Vashoth knocked on the Adaar family’s door. The tamassrans still held their control rods tight in their hands, but the mages under their care bore no masks and scars had formed where their mouths had been sewn shut.

“We have lost some already.” One of the tamassrans said when Raban’s mother asked about the rods. “In Tevinter. They are scared. Of demons. Of magic.” She looked over to the nearest mage with fond eyes. “They will learn, but slowly. I am . . . not wanting to rush them.”

Raban’s family took them in. Meler cooked them food, helped them pitch their tents near the house, and fetched water to help them clean up after their travels.

Rethari summoned his sister, Fen, from her home in an Avvar stronghold in the Frostback Mountains. She was a mage. It took weeks, but she came as quickly as she could and sent word ahead to keep careful watch on the Tal-Vashoth mages until she got there. She stayed until she and the women who had been tamassrans were able to help the new Tal-Vashoth mages become more comfortable with their freedom.

Over the course of the first three months of living on the Adaar homestead, three were taken by fear of demons, despite what Fen told them about spirit ejection techniques from the Avvar. Two killed themselves on the same day, setting themselves aflame the way they’d always been taught to. Meler screamed when she found them. Raban came running out of the barn to find her on her knees next to the nearest one, desperately trying to put out the flames. Three weeks later, one of the women slit her wrists after an argument with one of the tamassrans about a demon that had been bothering her. The next one held out the longest, but after an incident involving a blood mage apostate in the nearby foothills, they went downhill fast. They spoke for days of the monstrosities of magic before Fen came in one evening with the news that she’d just found them dead in the barn.

The deaths made Raban and his sisters wary, but as time passed, the other mages grew braver and bolder and settled into their new lives. The remainder of the control rods were slowly destroyed as the mages became more comfortable with the idea of being on their own. Cautiously, they took to freedom with giddy laughter and breathless smiles. They had no names. They had no lives. They had no real skills to offer. But they had an eagerness to learn and a need to please. They worked and lived on the farm for months as they found themselves.

Names came one at a time. Some chose human names. Ones they’d heard during their short trips into town. A hulking mountain of a man chose to go by Yda after a young girl who had given him his first cookie. One of the smaller women picked Hemma for the elderly woman that had taught the weaving she was beginning to master. Another liked Caeso after one of the Tevinter conspirators who had first taken them in on their flight from Seheron. Others took titles, the nicknames given by their people, and turned them into names with true meaning. One of the men chose Saarari with a wry smile while a tamassran took the name Shokrakar for her rebellion against the Qun. It took time, as all things did, but eventually they all had names they answered to with a smile and a mischievous gleam in their eye like they’d been caught doing something they shouldn’t.

Saami caught Raban’s eye from the moment she arrived, mostly because of her age. She was one of the youngest in their group. It was weeks, but Raban discovered she was a year younger than him and it pained him to see her broken horns and the scars on her lips that signified a life of forced silence. Though—and it was amusing to watch—she seemed to be more than making up for that silence now.

Saami fought against the teachings of the Qun with a vengeance. Where her kin cautiously dipped their toes into the waters of freedom, Saami plunged ahead with abandon. In fact, it was all they could do to hold her back from getting into trouble around the farm.

She could be wasteful, she found, and inefficient. She loved to make cookies, which had no place in the Qun. She wasted hours sleeping under the sun, playing with Raban’s sisters or the farm’s cat, or going into town to listen to the marketplace noise. She could say no to things she didn’t want to do. For a week after she learned this, it looked like Saami would quickly develop the habit of saying “no” to every question asked of her. She was the first of all the Tal-Vashoth to choose her name.

“Arvaarad call me Maraas,” she said through gritted teeth the very first night the Tal-Vashoth sat down to talk about their new future with the Adaars. “Maraas no more—Saami. Some . . . something.”

She hung doggedly on Raban’s heels as he worked and moved around the farm, asking questions about anything and everything that caught her fancy.

“What for?” She asked in a heavily accented Anders, pointing to Sayar’s discarded doll.

“It’s for playing.” Raban answered. Saami picked up the doll with reverence and gently ran her finger over its face.

“Playing?”

Raban watched her stumbling into independence with amusement and no little amount of help for some of her more mischievous antics. And, slowly, he fell in love.

Three years later, after many of the Tal-Vashoth had moved on, Saami was still there. Only now, she was Saami Adaar, with a wedding ring on her finger and an old dragon tooth from Raban’s family hanging from a chain around her neck.


	2. A Legend is Born

Kost Adaar, daughter of Raban and Saami Adaar, was born during the worst Summerday the area had seen in decades. The year was 9:17 Dragon Age. Great sandstorms had been blasting Kunostadt off and on for the past three days, coming and going in bursts of wind and sand. It had gotten so bad that Kunostadt had had to cancel the Summerday festivities due to the weather. The day that usually would have seen the village celebrating the first day of summer now had them locked in their houses, waiting out the worst of the storms.

Earlier that morning, while most were still dead asleep, Saami had woken Raban with news that her birth pains had started. Kunostadt’s midwife, Kierste Meyr, lived only a mile and a half away. She was an old family friend as their nearest neighbor and had requested they fetch her when Saami’s pains started, but the sandstorms were such that the Adaars couldn’t risk the trip until the storms died down for good. Sand lashed at their shuttered windows and thunder shook their cottage’s walls as Raban set their sturdy kettle to boil and gathered the supplies they’d been saving for this day.

Saami had what most would call an easy labor, though it hardly seemed easy at the time. She labored for the majority of the day. Raban held her from behind as she paced the length and breadth of their home, stopping every so often to pant harshly through a pain. He murmured prayers as they made their slow progress from one end of the cottage to the other, hour after hour. Saami was barely five years out of Seheron and Raban himself had never quite believed in the Maker the way the rest of his family did, but the supplications were a comfort as they held each other and waited for their firstborn’s arrival.

During a lapse in the sandstorms, Raban walked the mile and a half to fetch Kierste from her home back to the Adaar homestead.

“Damn babes, always coming at the worst time.” Kierste grumbled without heat as she shuffled back into her home to gather her bag of supplies. “That babe will be a strong one, mark my words. Coming into the world at a time like this!” She waved her finger decisively toward the ceiling. Raban just chuckled and tamped down the urge to tell her to hurry.

Another sandstorm hit just as Raban and Kierste were nearing the Adaar home. Raban wrapped his loose hood around his face and ran to open the door for Kierste. She groused the whole way in, a hand clapped to her face to keep her scarf in place. As they stumbled inside, Saami let out a hoarse yell and bent double over the dining table. The lantern on the table cracked as her magic exploded outward. Saami turned wide eyes to Kierste, but she only rolled her eyes and set her bag on the table.

“Fucking Chantry fuckers, scaring mages to death.” She muttered under her breath as she inspected the supplies Raban had gathered earlier. “Now, _liebling_ , have you been drinking the tea I made you?”

Saami was given another cup of tea, to help with the labor and prevent bleeding. Then it was time to wait.

It was only in the late hours of the night—though not yet late enough to be considered early the next day—when Kierste helped Saami to her knees on a thick layer of padding and her pushing started in earnest. Soon, Saami’s cries broke the tense silence that had fallen. Not half an hour later, the weak wailing of newborn baby filled the cottage, somehow drowning out the fierce storm raging outside. Saami slumped against the leg of their table, clutching her daughter to her chest, as Raban got shakily to his feet and fetched a washcloth.

“It’s a girl.” Kierste announced. She took Raban’s offered washcloth and wiped the baby’s face before placing her on Saami’s chest. Saami panted heavily and took a moment, ignoring the pain that radiated from her core, to simply drink in the sight of her daughter.

A light dusting of silvery hair sat atop her head, interrupted only by the smallest of horn bumps. They were barely there and if touched, they would be more like cartilage than bone. She had the puffy, flushed appearance of all new babes, covered in goo and blood and altogether it should have been an unappealing sight, but Saami had never seen anything so beautiful.

Saarebas weren’t allowed to breed any more than Circle mages were supposed to. They could never become tamassran. Not in all her life under the Qun had Saami ever held the notion that she would one day bear a child of her own, care for a tiny life that she’d made or raise another’s child as her own. But here she was, and all Saami could feel was . . .

“Kost,” she murmured. The babe in her arms squirmed, whimpered against the shock of air, but cried no more as her father joined them on the floor. “She is my peace.” Saami pressed a kiss to her daughter’s head. Exhausted, sweaty, covered in all the fluids that came with childbirth, the worst sandstorm of the decade raging outside, all Saami felt at last was peace.

And, so, Kost was born.


	3. Chapter 3

Kost was just four when her magic manifested.

She was visiting her grandparents’ home as she and her family often did. Saami and Meler chatted and kneaded dough at the table while the children played outside. Raban had gone out with his father to check the fencing around their fields. It was a quiet summer afternoon.

Kost’s older cousin, Theobald, was wearing an old helmet kept out of his eyes by his horns as he chased Kost and his younger sister, Nazen. Hands extended, he roared like the great monster he was pretending to be, making Nazen and Kost shriek with laughter and duck out of his reach.

There was a patch of sand near one side of the house and, as Kost rounded the corner, she lost her footing and threw her hand out to catch herself. Ice shot out from Kost’s hand and covered the ground nearby, including where Nazen’s feet had sunk into the sand. Nazen didn’t stop, however. She’d been running just as fast as Kost and her arms pinwheeled as she lurched forward, carried by her momentum even as her feet stuck fast in the block of ice. Kost’s feet were stuck too, as well as the hand she’d caught herself with. She toppled to the ground as Theobald ran into Nazen and sent the three of them crashing down.

Their crying brought Saami and Meler running out of the house.

Saami easily dispelled the ice. Nazen’s ankle was twisted and Kost had minor ice burn on her hand, but the tears ended as soon as Meler supplied them with a few cookies each. Saami, however, was still crying. She clutched Kost to her for the rest of the day, laughing and weeping all the while.

“Tama?” Kost asked at one point as Saami pressed kiss after kiss into her hair. Saami shook her head.

“You will be free, _kadan_.” She whispered with a beaming smile.

Now, while Meler and Rethari were devout Chantry goers, they were not fools. They knew how mages were treated in the Hossberg Circle, in the heart of the country that boasted the most devoted Andrastians of all Thedas. It was overcrowded and underfunded because no one in the Anderfels wanted to send money to anything that could benefit mages. Templars were known to be harsh in their punishments, raining down divine justice on those who dared make the smallest of infractions. It was worse for those who weren’t human. Mages often jumped at the chance to be conscripted by the Grey Wardens, just to get out of the Circle.

There would be no calling for the Templars or notification of the local Chantry that another child needed to be sent to the Circle. No, the Chantry sisters were kept ignorant of the Adaar family’s mages and had been since they’d arrived in the area.

As she had ages back, when Saami and her kin had arrived, Kost’s great-aunt Fen was called from her home in the Frostbacks.

Fen had gone searching for magical training outside a Circle when her magic had manifested at sixteen. After years of travel and an incident that had involved saving the life of an Avvar thane, Fen had been taken into the Wolf-Helm Hold to learn magic from their augur. She’d lived there over fifty years now. She came into the Adaar home, painted bone-white and black, furs over her shoulders and wolves’ teeth hung from her horns.

“She should come to the stronghold with me.” Fen sat with Saami and Raban the evening she arrived, a mug of tea in her hand. Kost was supposed to be sleeping, but she was wide awake and listening intently at the door of her room to the conversation on the other side. “Her training can be properly supervised until she’s strong enough to stand on her own.”

“And if that day does not come?” Saami’s voice was almost too quiet for Kost to hear. “If she cannot eject her spirit teacher?”

“The clan looks after those who aren’t strong enough to perform the spell that separates mage from spirit.” Fen said calmly. Kost wondered why they were talking about spirits, when all her tama had been talking about lately was staying away from them. “Our gods ensure neither party becomes corrupted by possession. She would live safely and better than she would as an untrained mage out in the world.” Saami moaned.

“I will not have her in one place—a cage— _Hissrost katoh, fih kaa’fes ebost-raas!_ ” She hissed. Kost opened her door a crack and looked out into the main room. Raban had a hand on Saami’s arm, calming her back into speaking Anders. “A large cage is still a cage. Your stronghold has walls.”

“Saami, Kost is a strong girl,” Fen said reassuringly. “Her magic will be strong too.”

Saami would not budge an inch.

After three days of arguing, Fen finally caved and agreed to teach Kost how to control her magic so at least she wouldn’t get dragged off to the Circle.

“She’ll have to be trained more formally when she gets older.” Fen insisted. “This is just enough to keep her from joining with an angry spirit or being noticed by the Templars.”

Kost loved elemental magic, electricity in particular. Her new favorite thing to do was shoot sparks off the ends of her fingers and watch them dance. Saami ha a hard time convincing her not to show it off to the children she went to school with. Fen was not happy about it, but after a summer spent with the Adaars, she declared that she’d taught Saami everything she could about how to handle Kost’s new magic and that Kost had learned all she could at this age. She left them with a message crystal she’d picked up during her travels through Tevinter and told them to contact her if anything came up.

“And I mean anything, Saami.” She said firmly.

“Yes, yes, I will.” Saami promised.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Qunlat Translation:  
> Hissrost katoh, fih kaa’fes ebost-raas. - Stop your lies, she won't live in a cage.


End file.
